Yevgeniya Rudneva

Yevgeniya Maksimovna Rudneva

Evgeniya Rudneva
Born (1920-12-24)December 24, 1920
Berdyansk, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine
Died April 9, 1944(1944-04-09) (aged 23)
near Kerch, Crimea
Allegiance  Soviet Union
Service/branch Soviet Airforce
Years of service 1941–1944
Rank Senior Lieutenant
Battles/wars Eastern Front (World War II) †
Awards Hero of the Soviet Union
Order of Lenin
Order of the Red Banner
Order of the Red Star
Order of the Patriotic War

Evgeniya Maksimovna Rudneva (Russian: Евгения Максимовна Руднева), also known as Zhenya Rudneva (Женя Руднева) (Berdiansk, 24 December 1920 – 9 April 1944 near Kerch) was a Soviet military air navigator, a Hero of the Soviet Union, a member of the Moscow branch of the Astronomical-Geodesical Society of the USSR, and head of the Solar Department.

Early life

Evgeniya Maksimovna Rudneva was Ukrainian, born into the family of an office worker. She had completed three years as a student in the Faculty of mechanics and mathematics of Moscow State University prior to October 1941, when she volunteered for Soviet Army. She became a member in the CPSU in 1943.

World War II

Rudneva graduated from Navigator School and entered combat in May 1942. She served in the rank of Guards Senior Lieutenant as a navigator of the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment, which later was redesignated the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Regiment (325th Night Bomber Aviation Division, 6th Air Army, 2nd Byelorussian Front).

She flew 645 night combat missions on the old and slow Polikarpov Po-2 biplane, destroying river crossings, troop trains, troops and military equipment of the enemy. She perished while flying her 645th combat mission near the village of Bulganak, to the north of Kerch. She was shot down by Flak along with her pilot Panna Prokofyeva.

Personal views

In her letter to professor Sergey Blazhko, head of the Astrometry Department of Moscow State University, dated 19 October 1942, she wrote that her first bomb she promised the Nazis for the building of the Faculty of mechanics and mathematics, which was bombed by them in the winter. She wrote that she was defending the honour of the university.

Awards and honors

Monuments to her were built in Moscow, Kerch and the Saltykovka settlement (in Moscow Oblast). The Asteroid 1907 Rudneva, a school in Kerch, streets in Berdyansk, Kerch, Moscow and Saltykovka were named after her.

See also

Bibliography

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